Woman hit by car on Eisenhower was drunk, lawyer says

A 25-year-old Chicago woman had a blood-alcohol level nearly two times the legal limit when she was struck and killed by a motorist while walking along the Eisenhower Expressway in September, shortly after she was released by Illinois State Police following a DUI arrest, an attorney for her family said today.

Police at the time of the crash said that Diana Paz was “alert” when a trooper dropped her off at a nearby gas station on Mannheim Road in Westchester before she was struck by a Toyota truck on the morning of Sept. 2.

But a recently released Cook County Medical Examiner’s report found Paz was intoxicated at the time of her death, raising the question of if Paz should have been released from police custody, said Tim Cavanagh, the attorney representing her family.

The family has filed a motion in Cook County court requesting information on the ongoing state police investigation into Paz’s death.

Cavanagh said Paz’s family wants to know why state police dropped her off “in the middle of the night when it was dark out, with no purse and no cell phone.”